We'll live and love while yet 'tis ours,
To live and love, my Lesbia, dearest,
And when old greybeard saws thou hearest,
(Since joy is but the present hour's,)
We'll laugh them down as none the clearest.
For suns will set again to rise,
But our brief day once closed--we slumber
Long nights, long days--too long to number;--
Perpetual sleep shall close our eyes,
And one dark night shall both encumber.
A thousand kisses then bestow;
Ten thousand more,--ten thousand blisses,--
And when we've counted million kisses--
Begin again,--for, Lesbia, know,
We way have made mistakes and misses.
Then let our lips the full amount
Commingle so, in one delusion,
Blending beginning with conclusion,
Nor we, nor envy's self can count
How many in the sweet confusion.
CURATE.--I protest against this as a translation. There is addition.
Catullus says nothing of "mistakes and misses."
AQUILIUS.--I maintain it is implied in "conturbabimus illa:" it shows
they had given up all idea of counting correctly.
GRATIAN.--I think it may pass; but you have a word twice,--"day closed,"
and "_close_ our eyes." Why not have it thus:--
"But our brief day once o'er," or once pass'd,--yet it is not so good,
as "closed." I see in the note on "conturbabimus," great stress is laid
on the mischievous spell that envy was supposed to convey, like the
"evil eye." This does not make much for Catullus--for a good kiss in
real earnest, not your kiss poetical, might bid defiance to every
_charm_ but its own.
CURATE.--There is something of the same superstition in the piece but
one following, "mala fascinare lingua" alludes evidently to the euphemia
of the Greeks,--the superstition of the evil eye and evil tongue. The very
word _invidere_ seems to have been adopted in its wider sense, from the
particular superstition of the evil eye. The Neapolitans of the present
day inherit, in full possession, both superstitions.
GRATIAN.--Nor are either quite out of England; and I can hardly think
that a legacy left us by the Romans. There is something akin to the
feeling in the dislike old country gossips show to having their
likenesses taken. I have known a sketcher pelted for putting in a
passing figure. And I have seen a servant girl, in the house of a
friend, who, having never, until she came into his service, seen a
portrait, could not be prevailed upon, for a long while, to go alone
into a room where there were some family portraits. What comes next
after all these kisses?
AQUILIUS.--More kisses.
GRATIAN.--Then you force a bad pun from me, and put my aching bones into
an _omni-bus_, and it is as much as I can do to bear the shaking. Give
your account of them, Aquilius.